The tower in Dread is much more visceral than just a pile of Jenga blocks, and in my experience skill has very little to do with it. There comes a point in the story where you KNOW that the tower is about to fall. It's one, maybe two pulls away from going down and somebody is going to be taken away. When the game hits that point is when the game lives up to its name. Nobody wants to pull, not the "good" players, not the bad ones, but somebody is going to have to.
If it were competitive, and maybe over a hundred games, then yes you might notice some people lasting longer than others. In one game, in one afternoon, all you're going to know is that you don't want to pull a block.